Brasilien 2011

Climate Change, the Peak Oil and the still growing hunger for energy of the modern societies on all continents: At the beginning of the 21th century the world is - like at the beginning of the 19th century - again in the search for a new direction. Is nuclear energy the solution for Climate Change and the growing demand for Energy as it is claimed by nuclear industry and scientists like JamesLovelock, the author of the Gaia theory?

Windscale (Sellafield), Harrisburg (Three Mile Island), Chernobyl, Goiânia: Radioactive and nuclear power accidents happen. Mining companies spreading around the world in search for new uranium deposits. And on the other side concerned citizens and indigenous peoples fighting against uranium mining projects in countries like Australia, India, Niger, Namibia, USA, Canada or Portugal. Are the democratic world societies - especially in emerging countries like Brazil, China, India or South Africa – prepared to make the right decisions? Do the people really know what radioactivity, what nuclear power means?

That was the background 2010 when we created – one year before Fukushima - the First International Uranium Film Festival in Rio de Janeiro: The first annual film festival to highlight nuclear and radioactive issues. A film festival to inform especially the Latin American and Portuguese speaking societies and to stimulate world-wide the production of independent documentaries and movies about the whole nuclear fuel chain from uranium mining to nuclear waste deposits; about atomic bombs and about the use and risks of radioactivity and radioactive elements in general.

We started the call for entry May 2010, and March 2011 - when we already had selected over 30 documentaries and movies from all continents - happened the nuclear accident of Fukushima!

Finally between 16th and the 28th of May we screened 33 selected films in the competitive category and 4 documentaries, which were not part of the competition, in Rio de Janeiro. The screening locations were CINEMAISON in the city centre and in Santa Teresa the theatre of the Centro Cultural Parque das Ruinas and the theatre of the Centro Cultural Laurinda Santos Lobo. We had an audience in total of more than 1000 people, many of them students and teachers.

Beside of the screenings we organized - as part of the Festival - two important and successful Exhibitions: "Maõs de Césio", a photo exhibition about the nuclear accident of Goiânia 1987 with the element Caesium 137, the worst radioactive accident of Latin America. The exhibition in the Cultural Centre Laurinda Santos Lobo attracted more than 500 visitors - not included the audience of the Film Festival. The exhibition can now travel to other cities. At the moment it is only in Portuguese, but the Idea is to have it also in English and Spanish and to bring it to other countries. The other exhibition was based on Radiating Posters selected by the Amsterdam based institutions WISE and Laka Foundation: 40 original posters of the global anti-nuclear movement. That exhibition in the gallery of the Cultural Centre Parque das Ruinas was also visited by hundreds of Cariocas and tourists. Satellite festivals were organized in São Paulo, Recife, João Pessoa, Natal, Fortaleza e Salvador. Further screenings are planned also in other countries like USA, Germany, Sweden and South Africa.

Special Thanks goes to the volunteer translators:

and further Special Thanks goes to

Tuane Martins, Sebastião Jorge and Rosane Sertório
to our Portuguese-English interpreter Luiz Augusto Silveira
to the represents of the indigenous people of Brazil
Afonso Apurinã, Tapiti Guajajar, Naiara do Sol of the Centro de Culturas Indigenas
Aldeia Maracanã for their performance during the Award Ceremony

On April 26th 1986, reactor n°4 at the Lenin power station in Chernobyl went out of control, leading to the consequences we all know: radioactive fallouts contaminating huge pieces of land, the creation of a 30-km-radius exclusion zone around the power station. In this now forbidden zone, the wild fauna and flora were left to their fate. What happened to this wildlife, freed from human pressure but immersed in the Chernobyl radioactive "hell"? For scientists, the Chernobyl forbidden zone has become an openair laboratory, a tragically unforeseen but huge laboratory. This is a strange noman's land where geo-chemists, zoologists and radioecologists are making disconcerting discoveries.

“Chernobyl, a Natural History?” was selected by the Uranium Film Festival Jury as one of the eight best festival documentaries.

Australia, 2007, 30 min
Directed by Scott Ludlam
Produced by Anti-Nuclear Alliance of Western Australia, www.anawa.org.au

Climate change, nuclear power and the energy revolution: Climate of Hope is a 30 minute documentary created to demystify climate change and nuclear energy. While the threat of climate change is now widely accepted in the community, the potential for a host of nuclear power stations in Australia has raised questions about the best strategy for our country to move to a low-carbon economy. This animated documentary takes viewers on a tour through the science of climate change and the nuclear fuel chain and the remarkable energy revolution that is under way.

“Climate of Hope” was selected by the Uranium Film Festival Jury as one of the eight best festival documentaries.

It is a short fiction movie made by Students of the School Colégio Santa Mônica of São Gonçalo (Rio de Janeiro). It is based on the radioactive accident 1987 in the city of Goiânia with the chemical element with the atomic number 55, also called Caesium 137.

“We selected Element 55 as a good example for other students and schools to produce their own films about nuclear and radioactive issues. It must not be a film about an accident like in Goiânia. I could be also a simple documentary about radioactive waste of the hospital in your neighborhood.” - Marcia Gomes de Oliveira

Pip Starr was a fighter and a filmmaker. He got depressed about things — the black dog was never far from the campfire," says Australian Conservation Foundation nuclear campaigner Dave Sweeney. "But he was just starting to cement a style and approach to documentary storytelling that I believe would have seen him emerge as a great modern stylist." There's a great body of work —many unfinished — because he funded his work on the run, supplemented by part-time work as a nurse at The Alfred hospital.

His landmark film about the Jabiluka blockade against a uranium mine in Western Australia, Fight for Country, was shot in four years.

Muckaty Voices is a short film capturing Aboriginal community resistance to an Australian government plan to dump low and long lived intermediate level radioactive waste at Muckaty Station, 120km north of Tennant Creek in the Northern Territory. The government's push for Muckaty has sparked widespread criticism from the targeted community, trade unions, national health and environment groups and Indigenous organizations. A federal court challenge has been launched to contest the Muckaty nomination. The film presents the country and community affected by this proposal.

It is the first Documentary made about the Brazil's nuclear power plants, Angra 1 and Angra 2 in the Atlantic Rainforest region in the South of Rio de Janeiro. With ironic humor, it shows that the official safety and evacuation plans to protect the local population and tourists in case of a nuclear meltdown are just a joke. Worse: Angra 1 and 2 are constructed on a beach, which the indigenous population (Guarani-Mbyá) called once Itaorna: Rotten Rock.

Radiating Future is the first documentary about the uranium mine Caetité in the Northeast of Brazil in Bahia. Mining started there in 2000. Since that time population and environment are in risk because of radioactive pollution.

“O futuro irradiante do Brasil” was produced only a week before the Uranium Film Festival started. Because it is the first film about the Brazilian uranium mine Caetité and its importance for Brazil we selected it for the non-competitive category.

The waters and health of Native and non-Native communities near the Grand Canyon and across the Southwest have been contaminated by decades of uranium mining and milling. Today, thousands of new uranium mining claims have been filed on the Colorado River Watershed, and directly threaten the water supplies of 25 million people. Join us in a conversation to help us understand more about Uranium.

Uranium Road is a penetrating documentary which rips the veil of secrecy from both the past and present South African nuclear programmes, showing how the nuclear industry creates closed cliques of the powerful and fundamentally undermines the democratic principles of our young democracy, repeating past mistakes. It exposes the billion rand industry that relies on a technology whose safety and economy has yet to be proven. It combines archival footage, interviews with local and international experts and tells of a community on the edge of a nuclear waste dump in scenic Namaqualand, cutting to the core of our democracy.